MEDIATOR STOCK
MODULUS
A couple things recently came to my attention. First, today is Sunday, but there’s not much I can do to change that. Second, however, is that I never finished talking about the 3-part kit that composes the Modulus Mediator. That, I can change, so today I’ll be looking at the third and final piece of the Mediator ensemble, the stock.
THE BLASTER ITSELF
“How can a stock warrant its own review?” I hear you say. Well, dear reader, this is no ordinary stock. It uses a never before seen set of intricate mechanisms in tandem with what I must assume is some kind of ancient magic to achieve the results we can observe. Not really. They made it big and hollow and stuck a pistol inside. Complex? No. Useful? Eeeehhhhmmmmmmaaaaaaaybe. Anyway, the Mediator Stock was released with the other 2 components in 2018. It came in two parts, the stock/holster, and the pistol. The stock itself is pretty straightforward. It attaches to any Nerf blaster with a stock attachment lug and is simply a fixed stock albeit with a rather long length of pull for a Nerf stock and some extra rubber overlays on the back end to make it grippy. The rear end of the stock is open to allow the pistol to be inserted or removed and this makes it feel a little odd when pressed against your shoulder, but it’s not uncomfortable. Just takes a second to get used to. There is a belt clip on the left side of the stock that allows you to attach it to your pants or belt to act as a dedicated holster for the pistol, if you so choose. The pistol is functionally identical to the Doublestrike from the Zombie Strike line, using a hammer primed, 2 barrel smart AR setup. Sure, it’s not much, but I get the feeling this is meant as a backup blaster rather than your primary. 
The shell of the blaster is all new and has been sculpted to allow a fairly firm friction fit into the stock/holster. The performance of the pistol is about what you’d expect from a backup blaster. The range and power might not be quite on par with a larger blaster but if your younger siblings don’t know that you have a second blaster, the surprise can be rather entertaining. The Modulus Mediator Stock comes with the stock/holster, the pistol and 4 Modulus Elite darts.
THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION
As soon as I bought the first 2 components of the larger Mediator set, I was basically guaranteed to grab the last one eventually. If I recall, I got mine from a local TRU, which is something only Canadians can say now. There’s really not much to say about this set. The stock is pretty decent quality and is a good size. The pistol shoots. Really, the one thing I might have liked to see is if they had redesigned the grip of the pistol to have a stock attachment lug so you could put the stock on it rather than it just being a holster on its own. Stocked pistols are totally a thing and I would have been so excited to have that as an option, but oh well. It does what it does well enough.
I know what you’re about to ask, so let me go ahead and answer it before you do.
It’s not the case, it’s a made up word.
itself is an interesting design in which you open the loading gate with the release levers just above the trigger and load rounds in the side of the blaster rather than the top or front like we’re used to seeing on dart blasters.
slow down as they fly through the air and end up floating a bit near the end of their flight path.
You may have heard that Vortex is back.
Ok, while this is a Vortex blaster, it’s not part of the VTX lineup, so I’m less of a passenger on the hype train and more of that guy with the accordion who just walks from car to car demanding money in exchange for giving you tinnitus.
in the tray, and hitting the slide release lever on the side of the blaster.
For the last couple rounds of Star Wars Nerf products, it seems like Hasbro has really settled on the formula of releasing a big show off blaster, a medium one with some features, and then a dinky little pistol that is really just there to have a cheaper offering.
Hi guys.
disappointing that this blaster couldn’t get its own unique sound, but if it plays into Hasbro’s game of halfway decent but still economical Star Wars products, I can get over it.
If there’s one staple of Nerf blasters that always comes back, it’s revolvers, ok, revolvers and jolts, but let’s stick with the revolvers for today. All things considered, it’s a good design. There’ve been so many iterations that pretty much any issues have already been ironed out, but if you look at Nerf Revolvers over time, they have this odd trend of steadily getting smaller and smaller cylinders, and in turn, lower capacity. Today’s blaster is the first example of a 4-shot revolver I can think of, but as we’ve seen from Toy Fair last month, it won’t be the last.
Ok, first things first, I know I give Nerf a decent amount of ribbing over the naming conventions for their blasters, but when the other 3 blasters in a line have names containing “falcon”, ”hawk”, and “raptor”, there’s a pretty clear theme that they’re going for. With that in mind, what the double deuce kind of name is Quadrant? I get the name references the 4 barrels in the cylinder, but it throws off the whole bird-of-prey thing they set up. Anyway, the Quadchickadee was released in 2018 as part of the Accustrike series. As mentioned before, it is a 4-shot revolver that works more or less like any other revolver at this point. The construction is all new and pretty solid, like you’d expect from a Nerf blaster of this size, and the ergonomics are good. The proportions are kind of weird, what with the top half of the blaster being rather large and bulky. 
At the very least, it’s not terribly top heavy which is a concern I had before it was released. What I don’t quite get is why the barrels are so far apart in the cylinder. Typically, the benefit of lower capacity in a revolver is a lower profile, but the cylinder for the Quadbearded-tit is barely smaller than the one in the Hammershot, which holds 5 rounds normally. But in addition, modders have shown it can handle 7 rounds in the same space quite handily. It just feels needlessly limiting to cap the capacity at 4, especially when it doesn’t even enable some other gimmick or function in the blaster. The performance is on par with other Nerf pistols. It doesn’t have the most power or range ever, but no one expects it to. Being in the Accustrike series, there’s nothing mechanical that separates this from any other blaster, all that means is it’s orange and comes with Accustrike darts as opposed to standard Elites. The darts do actually make it a little easier to hit targets from further away, so they’re good for surprise pot-shots at your younger siblings, with or without busting into their room first. The QuadAndean Cock of the Rock (it’s a real bird, look it up) comes packaged with 4 Accustrike darts.
“Hang on a minute, didn’t we just have a Rival review, like, two weeks ago?” I hear you ask. Why yes, sharp-eyed viewer, indeed we did. Ordinarily I’d try and spread stuff out and keep you guessing about what the next blaster will be, like a game, but this is new and hot. The new hotness, you might say. So this week I’m looking at the Kronos. Something that bears the name of the father to the Olympians must be a behemoth of a blaster, right? Actually, it kind of goes the other way, but trust me, it’s not the size that counts, it’s all about the balls.
The Kronos XVIII-500 was released in 2018 as part of the Phantom Corps subset of Rival blasters. I was initially under the impression that Phantom Corps was a Target exclusive line, but this blaster was purchased from TRU which confounded me to no end, at least for a few minutes. No idea what the deal with that is but whatever, you’re here to read about the blaster. The Kronos is a spring powered pistol with a 5 round integrated magazine à la MEGA Magnus or Star Wars Rey (Jakku) Blaster. Like both of those examples, the Kronos is loaded through a port on the top of the blaster that opens when the slide is primed back. The Kronos also has an additional flap covering the port which I guess isn’t really necessary but it does preserve the silhouette of the blaster a little bit. The shell of the blaster is all new and sports functional front and rear sights as well as 2 Rival accessory rails, one on the slide and one just above the muzzle. Interestingly, while the blaster is labeled “XVIII-500” on both sides, the name Kronos appears nowhere except on the packaging. Something to note about the rails on the Kronos is that, after attaching the Rival red dot sight, I noticed that it could slide back and forth just a little bit, just a few millimeters at most, and the nature of the attachment mechanism means it wasn’t in danger of falling off, but it’s just something I’d never had 
any of my other Rival blaster do. I doubt that’s going to make or break anyone’s opinion of it, though. Aside from that, everything about the Kronos’ construction is solid. The grip in particular is very comfortable and secure in the hand as it follows much more organic lines than the more hard-lined rest of the blaster body, which is a style I quite like, visually and practically. The slide has a surprising amount of thought and engineering put into it. Priming the blaster is fairly easy with the grip panels that add a good amount of traction as well as providing a more defined surface to pull back on. On the underside of the slide, there are a couple of telescoping flat panels that extend when the slide is pulled back, I assume to either keep the mechanism clean or to prevent kids pinching their fingers in the internals. The very rear of the slide also has a cutout so you can see the orange plunger when it’s primed as well as a button to release the lockup if the blaster jams. Like all other Rival blasters, the Kronos has a safety which locks the trigger when engaged. Unfortunately this particular safety has the same after-the-fact addition kind of feeling that the Zeus’ had. It’s hard to describe verbally, but it feels like it’s flexing before it clicks rather than pivoting and is generally unpleasant to operate, not that it’s a necessary feature per se. For its size, the Kronos holds its own surprisingly well against other Rival blasters in terms of performance. Shots fly and hit with the expected Rival accuracy and power, making it a 
real terror for younger siblings, especially given how low profile and nimble it is due to its smaller size. I’ve even found that it fits rather handily into standard jeans pockets for holstering, just so long as you have jeans with actual pockets (why are fake pockets even a thing? Sorry, side-tracked). The Kronos comes packaged with another set of red and blue Rival flag/ribbon things, provided you got the Phantom Corps version and didn’t shell out $70 for the Deadpool variants, as well as one Rival round- what’s that? It comes with 5 rounds? Ok.. if you say so. Scratch that, I guess it’s supposed to come with 5 rounds. Hmm…
One little word sure can make a big difference, especially when that word is “deluxe.” Yes, this is in fact a different blaster review from last week, it’s not a typo. So what does the First Order have to offer when “deluxe” is off the table? Well… not very much, as it happens, but let’s have a look at it anyway.
The First Order Stormtrooper Blaster was released in 2015, alongside the deluxe version as a promotion for The Force Awakens. If you’re not sure what part of the movie it’s from, you can be forgiven for missing it because it doesn’t get a lot of screen-time, but it’s there, I promise. Now, having just recently The Last Jedi, I can tell you it gets a couple scenes where characters using it are front and center on the screen, so that’s nice. The blaster itself is almost as basic as you can get. It is a single shot, muzzle loaded pistol with a little spring loaded priming tab in the back. While the tab does a good job of maintaining the blaster’s aesthetics even when primed, it does mean the actual size of the plunger tube is severely limited. You can really get a sense of this by how short and light the priming stroke is. The outer shell is completely new to resemble the blaster from the film and looks pretty accurate… until you actually hold it. In the film, the SE-44C blaster, which this is designed after, is built on a Glock 17 pistol. If you’ve been keeping up with my Star Wars Nerf reviews, you’ll know that in general the Nerf blasters have pretty good ergonomics as they’re modeled after props that used real world firearms. In the case of the FOSB, the shape is right, but the scale is waaaaayyy off. It feels tiny in the hand. As such, the normally quite comfortable grip of the Glock has been shrunk down so it no longer lines up with regular human sized hands. I understand the reasoning behind it, because otherwise there would be just an unnecessarily large body housing a small internal mechanism. Sure, they could have scaled up the plunger tube to get more air into the system but that… actually, that’s a good idea. Why didn’t they just do that? I guess it’s probably safe to assume that it all comes down to cost cutting measures, as is so often the case. But hey, at least it comes with a cool attachment piece, right? I mean, it does come with an attachment piece which clips onto the standard Nerf rail on the top of the blaster, but what even is the piece supposed to be? As far as I can tell it’s a sight(ish) but it sits in the dead center of the blaster and has no other sight to line up to, so it’s kinda useless. It’s actually really useless, but its on the blaster in the film, so there it is. The FOSB’s performance is about what you’d expect for a Stormtrooper’s backup blaster. Distance and power are lacking pretty heavily from that of a regular N-Strike Elite blaster, but you can usually hit your target if the muzzle is just about 5 or 6 inches away from it, so… yay? Stormtroopers are meant to be imposing and scary, but a couple shot from this blaster and I doubt you’ll be able to maintain that kind of fear-based dominance over your younger siblings when you bust into their room. The First Order Stormtrooper Blaster comes packaged with the useless sight/spike thingy and 3 of the red Star Wars branded Elite darts.
The Figure In Question 